Talk:Roche moutonnée

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Untitled[edit]

Doesn't "taper in the direction of flow" imply that the hill is most tapered (i.e. lowest) nearest the foot of the glacier? That's not right, is it?

Leptinella 00:19, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Origin of the term[edit]

I'd beg to differ with the explanation given of 'fleecy rock'. In their standard work on the subject 'Glaciers & Glaciation' (Arnold, London 1998) Douglas Benn and David Evans claim that it was 'de Saussure' who in 1786 coined the term 'roches moutonnées'. He saw in these rocks a resemblance to the wigs that were fashionable amongst gentry in his era and which were smoothed over with mutton fat hence 'moutonnée' so as to keep the hair in place. Anyone know anything more about this?
Geopersona (talk) 04:40, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The notion that the term means 'sheep rock' is a popular misconception (spread by generations of misinformed geography teachers?) which won't go away quickly - I have changed a recent edit to correct this. The French word for sheep is mouton, whilst moutonnière is sheep-like, however whilst moutonnée can mean fleecy or frizzy like the back of a sheep, a defining feature of these rocks is that they are smooth and very much not 'frizzy' or 'fleecy'. thanks Geopersona (talk) 09:52, 12 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Circumflex in roche seems very affected & not supported by evidence of usage in English[edit]

I thought only the New Yorker was keen on archaic orthography of words derived from French! I suggest the usage be changed to a plain o for the following reasons : the circumflex in words like roche is no longer a regular part of French orthography; there is no evidence of it having been used in books published in Englis (see google ngram); reputable English dictionaries dont use it (e.g., Oxford Dictionaries online; and, as said in the heading it looks very affected. Semudobia (talk) 10:31, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified (January 2018)[edit]

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on Rôche moutonnée. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 15:22, 24 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]